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Last week we had dia de la mujer which is woman’s day. (And right before I was going to post it I realized that it was international women’s day but my points still stand.) They talked about women in the olden days and modern women. And how women before were boring and didn’t do anything…

It started to snow during the first kilometer, which is not what you’d expect, hiking in Colombia. It wasn’t a soft, New Hampshire, get-out-the-cross-country-skis snow, but a Rhode Island coastal snow, halfway between snow and sleet, that uniquely snot-like texture that sticks to and soaks through everything. Which is unfortunate since we were wearing 90%…

It turns out, interestingly enough, that I’m not so good with ambiguity. It will surprise none of you who have spent more than five minutes with me to hear that I like to get the facts, decide and move on. Every professional — and most of the amateurs — of whom I’ve asked life advice…

I like to think of myself as this flexible, go-with-the-flow kind of gal. You know, who rolls with the punches and takes things in stride and all those other vaguely sports-oriented metaphors. It turns out, however, based on a forty-odd year track record of actual evidence, that I’m not. Which is one of the suck-y…

Packing for a six-month trip is a challenging task, doubly so when you are a person who hates to schlep stuff. Like, hates it. I have this vivid memory of trying to navigate from the Gare de Lyon to the Gare de Something Else in Paris after a cross-country, cross-Atlantic red-eye with all my gear…

Last night, at 3:30am, I woke up with my first full-blown panic about our plan. Of course it won’t work. We will be miserable and lonely. None of us will speak Spanish well enough to make friends. We will be stuck with the weirdo ex-pats that washed ashore in Central America. Retta will turn 12…

Anyone who has been in long-term relationship knows the trigger phrases. They are the words that, when they come out of your partner’s mouth, the world freezes. All senses go on high alert. “This is it,” you think. “Here it comes.” In my marriage, the trigger phrase is, “Hey, so I had this kind of…